Scheduled for a morning premiere, the trailer leaked hours early — so Rockstar simply published it at midnight and let it detonate. Within 24 hours it had passed 90 million views, setting a record for a non-music video debut, and Tom Petty’s “Love Is a Long Road” re-entered the charts on the strength of a 91-second video game trailer.
Embedded from Rockstar Games’ official YouTube channel.
Officially confirmed by the trailer and accompanying announcement:
- The setting: Vice City, in the fictional state of Leonida
- The first named protagonist: Lucia, the series’ first female lead in the 3D-and-beyond era
- A 2025 release window (later revised — see the delay entries in this timeline)
- A tone: sun-bleached satire of viral-video Florida, dense crowds, swamp and neon in equal measure
What we flagged as speculation at the time — the second lead’s role, playable-duo mechanics, the map’s scale — mostly stayed speculation until Trailer 2, which is exactly why we log these entries: it keeps our own guesses auditable. Rewatching frame-by-frame remains the community’s favorite sport; the map primer collects what that sport has legitimately produced.